‘Love Won Out’, What’s the Point?

I’m on my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan to give a presentation at Grand Valley State University on the harm caused by the “ex-gay” industry. My speech, followed by a panel discussion, is in response to Focus on the Family’s traveling road show, Love Won Out, which will be in town on Saturday. Having countered several of these conferences, I must confess, I still don’t understand what point they are trying to make.

If Focus on the Family’s goal is to convert gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people into evangelical Christians, they are doing a lousy job. It seems convincing gay people to end their relationships is a far higher priority to this ministry than having gay people develop personal relationships with Jesus Christ.

For every guilt-ridden homosexual who temporarily falls under their spell, they lose hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people who view their conversion program as intolerant. If your ministry causes many gay people to write off not just Christianity, but all religion, by what measurement can you consider your evangelizing a success?

At Love Won Out, speakers go to great lengths to profess their deep concern over the mental and physical well being of homosexuals. It turns out, however, that the anti-gay sentiment expressed at these conferences may be hazardous to the health of GLBT people.

A new Emory University study concludes that the bans on same-sex marriage pushed by Focus on the Family can be tied to a rise in the rate of HIV infection. The scientists found that a constitutional ban on marriage equality raised the rate by four cases per 100,000 people.

“We found the effects of tolerance for gays on HIV to be statistically significant and robust, they hold up under a range of empirical models,” says Hugo Mialon, an assistant professor of economics. “Intolerance is deadly,” Mialon said. “Bans on gay marriage codify intolerance, causing more gay people to shift to underground sexual behaviors that carry more risk.”

Earlier this year, a study by San Francisco State’s Caitlin Ryan concluded that “teens who experienced negative feedback (when they came out) were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”

So, if Love Won Out is truly concerned about the health of gay people, particularly teenagers, it will transform into a gay affirming ministry. To continue down their destructive path of judgmental condemnation is senseless and significantly harmful to the very GLBT people that Focus purports to want to help.

Of course, Focus on the Family will insist that they love gay people and just want to help those who are unhappy. But, isn’t it a conflict of interest when you lobby to pass anti-gay laws that make gay people miserable and then offer yourself up as the panacea to the pain? Is it not hypocritical to sponsor a conference supposedly about love, where the main speaker is Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International?

Chambers hosts a Christian television show, Pure Passion, which pollutes the airwaves by repeatedly calling gay people “sexually broken” and “perverse.” Exodus also sells “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness” a book authored by Andy Comiskey that says, “Satan delights in homosexual perversion.” Such pronouncements are often accompanied by exorcisms given by churches affiliated with ex-gay ministries. Obviously, such extreme actions are anathema to creating a welcoming church environment for GLBT people.

Focus on the Family also claims its conferences are for parents, friends, family members or ministry leaders who want to “lovingly reach out with uncompromised faith.”

Genuine love, of course, requires making the very compromises and sacrifices that Love Won Out is telling people are unnecessary. Rejecting a friend or family member’s innate sexual orientation as sinful and defective, rarely leads to a healthy relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

Finally, the investigative reporter Thomas Maier just released a groundbreaking book, “Masters of Sex.” In it, he reveals that the famed sex research team, Masters and Johnson, had fabricated claims of curing gay people in their 1979 book, “Homosexuality in Perspective.” Given this vital new information, why hasn’t Focus on the Family taken the opportunity to review and question the validity of its program? Wouldn’t that be the moral course of action to take?

The hard truth is, Focus on the Family’s leaders are only capable of loving people exactly like themselves, which explains their tremendous efforts to remake gays in their image. While their splashy road show may get high marks for good theatre, it’s ultimately futile because their transparent version of “love” rarely wins converts and succeeds only at convincing most gay people to run out of the church door.

About the Author

Wayne Besen is the Founding Executive Director of Truth Wins Out and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003). In 2010, Besen was awarded the “Visionary Award” at the Out Music Awards for organizing the American Prayer Hour, an event which shined a spotlight on the role American evangelicals played in the introduction of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

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19 Comments

Concerning the panel discussion at GVSU on Thursday, why is there no representative from Love Won Out invited? Why is it so one-sided? I know you’re someone that doesn’t mind being challenged in what you have to say, so why have a “panel” with no representative from the other side?

1) Every respected medical and mental health organization in the nation says so-called “ex-gay” therapy can be harmful and often detrimental to mental health. So, clearly, there is no current “debate” on this topic in academic circles. Meanwhile”ex-gay” groups engage in exorcisms and bizarre touch therapy, while failing to provide peer review studies or keep statistics. Why would such anti-science organizations merit participation in a university setting, which is dedicated to knowledge?

2) I’ve personally been in town while more than a dozen Love Won Out conferences were taking place. Not once has Focus on the Family EVER asked me to host a seminar about the harm of “ex-gay” therapy. Why the double standard? Why no “representative from the other side”? I’m fascinated by Focus on the Family’s sudden advocacy for diversity of opinion. When will this be reflected at Love Won Out? When will I get my invitation? If Focus on the Family wants respect, they should try giving it. That would be the Christian thing to do. I’m still waiting for my invitation.

3) Because Love Won Out failed to offer divergent opinions on this issue, this panel was necessary. Marcus, you can’t have it both ways. Either you respect airing different opinions all the time, or not at all. You can’t stand for liberalism and diversity only when it is politically convenient. That is called hypocrisy.

1) Actually, there are numerous scientific studies by respected specialists in the GLBT field demonstrating that some people can, in fact, be greatly helped by reparative therapy and the like. Surely you are aware of those academic studies.

2) There are plenty of GLBT voices in the world, just as there are many conservative Christian voices, and each one has their platform, but when a university hosts a panel discussion in the name of inclusion and diversity, it would be assumed that other voices would be heard as well.

3) From what I understand, Dr. Michael Brown, a speaker at LWO, has offered to have public dialogue with you, beginning in Charlotte (and in conjunction with Love Won Out). Isn’t that correct?

1) Marcus – there are NO respected studies that say people can be helped. Which ones? I suspect you will trot out discredited, outdated studies by quacks. Masters & Johnson’s study was just debunked. Please, stop misleading people.

2) I find it telling that you expect more from a university than you expect from yourself. I think it is amusing that you hide behind the liberal values of inclusion, when you are not prepared to offer it.

3) Marcus, I will be at Love Won Out. Where is my invitation from Dr. Brown. I want to show my slide show and educate the poor people who are getting bad information and being sold false hope.

Nicholas Cummings, former President of the APA, described the work in this way: “This study has broken new ground in its adherence to objectivity and a scientific precision that can be replicated and expanded, and it opens new horizons for investigation.”

2) When the opportunity was offered to gay clergy to come to the church I’m affiliated with in Charlotte and present their views in an open and respectful exchange (September of 2007), they declined the invitation. Our door is always open for that, and you are invited the next time you’re in town. The university panel discussion is equivalent to our open forum, except that we are truly inclusive where your side is not. Only Matt Comer of Q-Notes was willing to attend our event in 2007, and we gave him the mic to share his personal story without interruption.

3) As far as I recall, you have never invited someone from our side to speak at one of your events, and when people pay money to attend (as they did at your event in Charlotte), we wouldn’t expect that you would give us equal time, any more than attendees at LWO are coming to hear you. However, Dr.
Brown would be delighted to debate you before or after any LWO event, and he would gladly get word out to his constituents about that.

JamesJune 9, 2009 at 10:21 pm -

Marcus French,

I have went to “reparative therapy” and it just did not work for me. I tried everything. Still did not work. I suffered greatly because of it, too.

Now I have a right to shae my story of my grief and how the best way for me was to accept myself as gay.

Anyone who says that gays can change usually attribute homosexuality to sexual behavior. Believing the myth that a homosexual is simply someone who engages in sexual relations with members of the same sex. There are heterosexuals, who out of curiousity, or some other reason, engage in homosexual sex. The “reparative therapy” may work for them because they have a problem with homosexual bhavior. They are not homosexual, they engage in homosexual behavior. Just because you have sex with someone does NOT mean you have romantic, physical, and emotional feelings and attractions to them.

Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, is more complex. It is a combination of romantic, physical, emotional, AND sexual feelings. NOT just sexual behavior.

Like, I noticed the ones who experience the most “success” from “ex gay” therapy are not really homosexual. Heterosexuals who have engaged in homosexual activity call themselves “gay”. I am homoexual because I have romantic, physical, sexual, and emotional feelings and attraction to other men. Now, if I were to have sex with a woman, it would not make me heterosexual. If I did have sex with a woman, I might like it, and become addicted to it, but if I went to some “therapists” to try and get rid of those feelings, then I would be successful because I am NOT heterosexual, I would just be engaging in heterosexual sex.

Now what if I was heterosexual and I got my heterosexual behavior controlled? THEN there would be a problem because I would HAVE legitimate heterosexual feelings, but since the “behavior” would allow me to express them, would be cut-off, it would cause self-destruction.

THAT is the problem with “ex gay” therapy. It focuses on BEHAVIOR not orientation. My homosexual behavior is changed, but my homosexual feelings still say and never dissipate and I cannot express them because that ability was cut off.

You see what I’m saying here?????

Say what you wanna say, but according to all mainstream mental health professionals, anyone who is TRUTHFULLY gay (and not just considered gay by stereotype or by some OTHER means) CANNOT become heterosexual. Simple as that.

JamesJune 9, 2009 at 10:22 pm -

By the way, good luck Wayne Besen, I hope the GLBT people in Michigan are enlightened by you!

Just as I had expected. You trot out a sham study from Pat Robertson University (Regent U) as your so-called “proof.” Is that really the best you can do? What a joke. Isn’t that University founded by the toothy televangelist who said gay pride flags would bring destruction to Orlando from meteors and hurricanes?

Nice source.

Marcus, you’ve got to do better than that…..besides the fact, that study did not exactly have much success for so-called ex-gays.

Pathetic, really.

Again, I will be in Grand Rapids. I want my slide show to be shown at Love Won Out. What are they afraid of? You people are just a bunch of whiners, who want the be included – yet don’t offer inclusion. Double standard, to say the least.

A good place to start is here: Profs. Stanton Jones & Mark Yarhouse, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study, InterVarsity Press, 2007.

Jones and Yarhouse did not deal with "reparative therapy," but religious programs and their results were dismal. Reparative therapy has even less credibility. And of course Brown wants to debate — is there anyone in the spotlight he doesn’t want to debate?

Marcus French: From what I understand, Dr. Michael Brown, a speaker at LWO, has offered to have public dialogue with you…

…Dr. Brown would be delighted to debate you before or after any LWO event, and he would gladly get word out to his constituents about that.

“But what do you say to those who are sexually attracted to their pets?”
“But what do you say to the father who wants to marry his daughter?”
“But what do you say to the child molester who says he was born that way?”

Brown’ idea of debate.

He’ a morass of manipulation.

The questions themselves are meant to indict—with the ultimate goal of eliciting an elaborate answer that uses the word gay, homosexual, et al, in the same sentence as the pariah in question. Thus, repeatedly associating the two in the listeners mind.

Marcus, I am no fan of made up fantasies. Reality talks here. The research you sited, Jones and Yarhouse, reported 30%+ change, meaning “stable chastity” and “complicated” heterosexuality. What is that?

The burden of proof is with these “ex-gays”. There is enough evidence of science distorted and manipulated by these groups that you can find here at this site. And you, of course will do your best to justify pseudo-sciences for the sake of prejudice in self or others.

I tried it, twice, and still every morning when I wake up I am still a bisexual. I am sexually cold, and it does not change that fact. And I still know I am a girl. Cutting my hair, changing my clothes and getting a girlfriend do not change my inborn person.

The study was repudiated by mainstream mental-health professionals due to its use of a rigged sample, its misdefinitions of both orientation and success, its manipulation by the sponsors at Exodus International, and its exclusion of those who have been harmed by ex-gay “therapy.”

In the bizarre alternate universe of Michael Brown, Jones, and Yarhouse, homosexual chastity equals heterosexuality. Also classified as heterosexuality: Sexless ex-gay Christian marriage in which the ex-gay partners cheat on the side.

Marcus French and Michael Brown are champions of ex-gay infidelity, unhappy ex-gay celibacy disguised as happy heterosexuality, and defamation against healthy, faithful, and responsible gay relationships.

If Focus on the Family would end the police-state atmosphere at “Love Won Out” and invite critics as keynote speakers, then there would be no need for off-site conferences to restore the diversity of reputable academic viewpoints that Focus keeps trying to suppress and distort.

Wayne,
To answer your question why they keep doing what they do, I am reminded of the movie Saved where the character Patrick tells Mary that “Mercy House doesn’t exist for the people who are sent there, but for the ones doing the sending”. I think the LWO group is the same. I was in an Exodus affiliated ex-gay ministry for a very long time, attended conferences, was even interviewed for Focus’ radio news show with Anthony Falzarono several years ago, it didn’t work for me and honestly I don’t know of anyone who it did work for. I have known guys who were able to marry a woman but they were pretty much bisexual anyhow. 12% success rate? Not from anyone I have met.

JoeJune 12, 2009 at 10:01 am -

To Marcus French – I went to the GVSU event last night and Dr. Brown attempted to insert himself into the debate. How completely hypocritical. He demands to have a voice at the forum, yet I absolutely guarantee LWO would refuse any such participation by the other side. In fact, an audience member read out loud the agreement that LWO attendees must assent to – LWO requires that you allow them to remove you at any time for any reason from their event, because they don’t want dissent and they don’t want opposition to their lies. LWO also wants you to part with $50 of your hard earned cash so they can “love” you. The GVSU event was entirely free.

Why must LWO distort science so much to try and make their point? Just come out and say it: you think gay people are evil and you support discrimination against them. You’re on the losing side of history.

Rick Brentlinger’s comment above was trapped in this site’s spam filter for the past several days. I have (obviously) just released it.

Apologies to Rick (and thanks for the thanks).

Matt ComerJune 23, 2009 at 1:25 am -

Marcus French said: “As far as I recall, you have never invited someone from our side to speak at one of your events, and when people pay money to attend (as they did at your event in Charlotte), we wouldn’t expect that you would give us equal time, any more than attendees at LWO are coming to hear you. However, Dr. Brown would be delighted to debate you before or after any LWO event, and he would gladly get word out to his constituents about that.”

Just a reminder to Marcus that there was no admission “charge” at that Charlotte event co-sponsored by Truth Wins Out, CRANE, the Lesbian & Gay Community Center, Faith in America and others. “Admission” that evening was purely by donation only. In fact, I’d dare say that close to if not more than 95% of the activities at the Lesbian & Gay Community Center of Charlotte are by donation only; no one would ever be turned away for lack of money (I’d bet that isn’t the case at LWO).

And, a second reminder to Marcus: He and his wife were able to attend and later report on the event for free.

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